How could we make CRAH work? Economists needed!

This is an MMO.

The way a lot of the game aspects - gathering and auction houses to name a few - have played out on a lot of medium/low/recommended servers seem to me obviously not intentional, considering the classification of the game. Blues said that they will actively tweak gathering (mining/herbalism, possibly skinning), and yet they are keeping them as they are. This suggests that they believe gathering plays out about the same in each cluster of realms in the cross-realm zone system, and is balanced as they see fit.

You should tread lightly with arguing about this unless you are a wall street economist (whom honestly I bet there's one or two of on MMO-C) or something like that. Blizzard probably (how many big-sallary economists do you think THEY have? a lot) knows more than most people the details behind how anything impacts the economy in the big picture. But this isn't the point.

Now that you understand why CRZ is here to stay, here's my theories and questions to the (much smarter and economically bright) MMO-C community:

Anything you do in the game world that gives you items or gold impacts your server's economy (your auction house).
CRZ impacts the game world, particularilly gathering.

Since supply is determined by demand, we (based on probability) assume realm 1 gets 55% of the mining nodes, while realm 3 only gets 10%. In the long run.

Okay, this means they will technically get as many ores per player. But this doesn't work for a low pop realm. A low pop realm feels a lot more like a solo-game because the small demand means that all suppliers who are interested in making money will find a part of the market to score monopoly on.

What are the downsides to simply linking the auction houses on realms who are already linked through CRZ?

All CRZ clusters would have ~equal AH. The big realms, who are in a CRZ cluster, would have their AH kept as it is (I know it's painful enough to post auctions as it is now on big realms). Medium realms would have their economies slightly improved, and all the small pop realms would have their economies completely overhauled (in most people's opinions for the better).

I would like to hear other people's opinions on how you could potentially make cross-realm auction houses work.
I agree with that merging servers is a much better option than CRZ and CRAH, but it seems like something Blizzard is hestitant (for whatever reasons) to do.

There are probably some mistakes and misinformation in this thread, and you are welcome to correct them. This was a quickly written baseline theory that I'm hoping can tweak into an idea of how CRAH could and would work.

I can't imagine competing against people on an entire battle group... I'm sure the bots (you'll never get rid of all of them) would love to have a larger market for their goods.

FYI, they're not merging servers because the critical mass hasn't dropped to the point where it makes sense. When it does, it triggers free realm transfers from hi-populations and levels out nicely (from what they've told us). Believe it or not, there are lots of players who prefer the low population realms. I'm on an original realm that is med-high population... if a third of the players were moved to another server, it would be nice. =)

So you think we shouldn't get a well-priced auction house because you, the sellers, which is like 2% of the population will not benefit from it, and because the bots will get a mariginally larger market? Most bots play on high-pop servers anyway and won't be affected much by this.

It would diminish the auctions on your normal auction house if a separate auction house existed with less cost to post items. If there is more cost, people will stay away (like the cross faction AH) and if it's the same people would only sell cross realm to increase the sale potential.

Edit: People would also abuse this buy trading with themselves on different servers. Example:

Sylore on RealmA can buy an item for 15k gold.
Sylorelol on RealmB can buy the same item for 30k gold.

Both characters are on the same account.

Sylore buys the item, posts it on the CRZAH and Sylorelol buys it for way less.
The owner of these characters saved a ton of gold.
This can also be used by gold farmers, and exploited to buy one item in a certain economy, and resell in another for far more, then xfering back the money via grey items.

TL;DR
Not a very good idea, would cause certain economies to fall, others to grow. To prevent exploits, too many restrictions would have to be put in place and it would fail.

Last edited by Sylore; 2012-10-30 at 09:50 PM.

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

To prevent confusion over whether you’re playing a card game or returning to town, the Hearthstone will now be called a Homerock.

It would diminish the auctions on your normal auction house if a separate auction house existed with less cost to post items. If there is more cost, people will stay away (like the cross faction AH) and if it's the same people would only sell cross realm to increase the sale potential.

And if it's less? Which it would be. Obviously the biggest (as long as not annoyingly far away and less profitable because of the higher post fee, neutral AH) market is the one that will be used. And even if there was actually a realm-only auction house - which there obivously wouldn't be because it makes no sense to have one - it wouldn't actually be there because noone would ever use it.

Originally Posted by Sylore

Edit: People would also abuse this buy trading with themselves on different servers. Example:

Sylore on RealmA can buy an item for 15k gold.
Sylorelol on RealmB can buy the same item for 30k gold.

Both characters are on the same account.

Sylore buys the item, posts it on the CRZAH and Sylorelol buys it for way less.
The owner of these characters saved a ton of gold.
This can also be used by gold farmers, and exploited to buy one item in a certain economy, and resell in another for far more, then xfering back the money via grey items.

If you can save a ton of gold, how is that a bad thing? If the local auction house prize is higher (which it wouldn't be, because no retard would post something for 30k on the local AH when the CRAH had it for 15k) then why is it a bad idea that you can find it cheaper elsewhere, if that elsewhere represents a price based on a realm where resources are not scarce and just hopeless to obtain?

Originally Posted by Kivimetsan

Just let the free market work itself out. Its worked fine for the last 8 years, why change it?

And that's why Sha Crystals sell for 4k on my old realm and 500g on my new realm. And there's tons of crap that isn't even actually on the auction house at all. You have to either disband and learn skinning/mining/herbalism or make an alt, level it to at least 85 and then level a profession just to get the materials you need, because there is noone around selling your item at all. How is this fine ????

And if it's less? Which it would be. Obviously the biggest (as long as not annoyingly far away and less profitable because of the higher post fee, neutral AH) market is the one that will be used. And even if there was actually a realm-only auction house - which there obivously wouldn't be because it makes no sense to have one - it wouldn't actually be there because noone would ever use it.

So you're saying you want to eliminate the realm auction house? I don't see how this is would help the economy of the server.

Originally Posted by Caduceus

If you can save a ton of gold, how is that a bad thing? If the local auction house prize is higher (which it wouldn't be, because no retard would post something for 30k on the local AH when the CRAH had it for 15k) then why is it a bad idea that you can find it cheaper elsewhere, if that elsewhere represents a price based on a realm where resources are not scarce and just hopeless to obtain?

We're talking about merging economies. There is no way you can merge multiple economies and not have one of them decline. This might help a small server, and help people make loads of money exploiting the system, but it would still have a negative impact on other economies.

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

To prevent confusion over whether you’re playing a card game or returning to town, the Hearthstone will now be called a Homerock.

Take it to the ultimate and just have a single AH for all servers. Bits and gold sellers v the rest. Hacked accounts v legitimate players.

Btw its all a bit bonkers, servers develop different ways and get their own identities. They seem to wnat to merge every aspect of the game to make it easier for them except the one thing that players want which is servers to be more balanced. They dont mind milking the transfer fees, but blizz dont care one jot about the much poorer experience a very low pop can suffer.

A CRAH would be very much like what is happening with the Euro. Some servers would be more favourable to produce on than others and the least favourable ones would suffer a big disadvantage.

Be nice if blizz just managed servers properly and then AH wouldnt get so unbalanced. For those complaining against ccost, there are two markets on any server and instead of complaining you cna see it as an opportunity for another aspect of the game. Any decent guild has a full range of crafters that can make most things in the game. I have never found shortages to be a problem becayse im alwats gappy to go out and et the mats myself if need be.

Solution to resource nodes is obvious. System needs to be changed so that resource nodes would spawn individually, just like current archaeology. Non-shared resource nodes are implemented in many MMOs out there as there is nothing except grief from "competition" after resource nodes (with mobs aggroing at you many yards away when you try to get some ore deposit, and other person stealing it while you fight).

A CRAH would be very much like what is happening with the Euro. Some servers would be more favourable to produce on than others and the least favourable ones would suffer a big disadvantage.

How? If the market and the CRZ were the same, then bots would see very little to no difference between realms, because not only are they the same market, but practically also the same realm. Every realm would be as favorable within each CRAH cluster, and as Blizzard can change around and balance each cluster they would all be extremely close in total amount of demand. This would make prices insanely more equal on different realms than they have ever been.

Originally Posted by Ferocity

On CRAH all goodies would cost [vendor price]+1 copper. No, thanks.

A CRZ cluster currently has (should have) about the same fight over nodes, and the same supply in general as a CRZ cluster combined if Blizzard statists did their jobs right. CRAH prices should be about the same as the auction house on a big server. Which is far from vendorprice+1.

Originally Posted by Peroxidex

tl;dr - OP gets undercut on his realm too much.

Seriously though, Google "The Undermine Journal" and look at some common commodity prices across all realms. You'll realize that essentially everything you base your opinion on is incorrect.

Thanks for the chuckle though, estimating the economy's health based on the realm population was a good one.

I get undercut a lot, therefore I want to expand the user amount of each auction house so that I get undercut faster because there are more players trying to undercut me. Yes.

Thanks for the site, though. Can't belive I've missed out on it

Care to explain how it contradicts my statements though? I base my opinion on my own experience on a low pop realm for 4 years, after having played on a medium size realm in vanilla and TBC. It doesn't get more (virtually) real than (virtual) reality. At least be a true smartass and educate instead of making loose claims and sounding like a troll :/

First thing I came over: https://eu.theunderminejournal.com/item.php?item=74248. Scroll down to EU Markets Chart. What I can see in this picture is that the prices skyrocket when you move your eyes to the left, where the low population / small market AHs are. Then again it doesn't really matter, because according to the site these realms don't get the chance to buy 1000% overpriced Sha Crystals very often; they're usually nowhere to be bought at all. Unfortunately this was the only remotely relevant info I could find on the site in 10 minutes. The site seems heavily bugged or just missing information for a lot of realms, though. I'll keep looking

And I don't post auctions, ever. Bringing up this topic is kinda mostly because I'm surprised noone else has tried starting a constructive discussion about it. The community seems reluctant to try to find solutions for all the shit Blizzard does to the game...

So if the auction house has no real price difference, what would be the point to having it? I can sell an item either way, and in no way benefit more from one or the other. Why have both exist? The auction house serves its purpose and I see no reason for what you are suggesting.

Please explain to me why this would help (in your opinion).

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

To prevent confusion over whether you’re playing a card game or returning to town, the Hearthstone will now be called a Homerock.

You don't benefit because you play on a decent realm. Make an alliance toon on Crushridge EU or Warsong US, look at their auction houses, and ask around whether people think the auction house is working properly. It is not. I don't know how many realms are small enough to suffer like this, but I know there's more than 50 only in the EU. I believe something 50+/271 broken makes something eligible for a fix.

Good argument. Oh, wait. This makes no sense either; vanity stuff is what's most subject to cheating (dupe) and the market would be completely ridicolous just like it already is on big realms for these items. Besides this would do nothing to fix the financial situation most low pop realms are in atm...

Good argument. Oh, wait. This makes no sense either; vanity stuff is what's most subject to cheating (dupe) and the market would be completely ridicolous just like it already is on big realms for these items. Besides this would do nothing to fix the financial situation most low pop realms are in atm...

On my realm the local ah wizards still cant get rid of the dupes they snaped up the huge majority on my backwater server prolly wouldnt pay more than 5k for any vanity item ever!

tbh the vast majority of players wouldnt pay huge sums for vanity items so these items can quite literally out bid themselves into the ground and wouldnt affect local economy's

local economy's are based on ores glyphs and little items that the casual player needs to level up proffs etc so i see no problem with what i said

Vanity items dont mean shit and tbh i dont care if i see a hundred duped tcgs shit on my server it wont affect anyone execpt the hacking pricks that do it but those who go out and farm ore wont be affected cause like i said ores herbs etc should remain local

So you think we shouldn't get a well-priced auction house because you, the sellers, which is like 2% of the population will not benefit from it, and because the bots will get a mariginally larger market? Most bots play on high-pop servers anyway and won't be affected much by this.

That is not at all what I said, which means you're using an agenda to interpret. I'm guessing you're getting punished in an AH war. It would make my job easier for sure as I routinely mule over characters full of high value items... but that doesn't alone make it a good idea.